Could have been better
by Bomberguy789
Summary: It couldn't get much worse for this poor bloke. He was misunderstood by all he met because of his looks, and he sometimes struggled to understand himself. This wasn't surprising, considering he had become a Grimm. But he wished that would change.
1. Chapter 1

**Screw it, I'm an unreliable author with too many inconsistent ideas that I don't fully follow up on. Read if you feel like it, but be warned that I made this when I was bored and wanted to play Overwatch right after making this (which means if there are mistakes, I will NOT spot them in time or read through this again to make sure there were no mistakes). Enjoy what may be the only of its kind.  
Edit: Well, something the other day took up enough time to prevent me from writing as much as I wanted so new day, new work. Here goes.**

I was a monster.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't hate myself or anything. I haven't done anything particularly bad, nor do I plan to in my life. Heck, I would say that as far as guys go, I'm pretty good (and extremely humble too). But that doesn't change my situation.

I had been turned into a monster from a TV show. RWBY to be exact. I don't know why, but one moment I was falling asleep in my bed, and the next I was waking up in a large grassy clearing. There was no transition stage. Just point A, then point B. Kind of like "The metamorphosis," by Franz Kafka. This then brought up the thought of my family. Had something happened to them? Was it just me that this had happened to, and if so, what were they currently thinking? What had even happened?

* * *

What happened:

An aging scientist and his grandson approached a dusty grey container with a high-tech lock on it. The scientist took out the key from his pocket and unlocked the door, unveiling a room full of people wearing white medical one-suits lying down on medical beds. Each had a heart monitor next to them, and every heart monitor gave the same audible confirmation – the patient was dead. The scientist stepped inside, grabbing a shovel from beside the door and proceeding to the end of the container, while his shocked grandson hung back.

"Grab a shovel." But the grandson was still shocked at what was going on. Had he caused all of this?

"Wh-What is-?"

"Grab a shovel!" demanded the scientist, annoyed by his grandson. He had spent weeks on this project, and now it was all going to waste because his grandson was too stupid to follow basic instructions. The scientist sighed. Why did he bother to put up with this?

The grandson scampered into the adjoining room. Seeing a switch, he couldn't help himself. Click.

"What was that?!"

* * *

Back to the story

It seemed likely I would never know. And that saddened me. So I began to cry. Sure, I was in my twenties, and wasn't the most feminine of people, but I was happy to be who I was and I was not that now. That was when I found out I was a monster.

If I'm sounding too impersonal, or not sad enough, then that is because if I try to explain what I was feeling then I would feel it too, and that would prevent the existence of this story, which would ruin the point of its creation.

Anyway, I realised I was a monster. This was because the noise I created was some horrible screech, a mixture of nails scratching on chalkboards and pebbles crashing into each other which momentarily shocked me out of my sadness from the pure awful nature of its sound. I looked down: or at least, tried to look down. My head had lost the ability to move independent of my body, and my body felt so different and _wrong_ that I couldn't move it. I tried to get up, only to make these _things_ – because they certainly weren't legs – wriggle and writhe underneath me. No matter what I tried, they failed to have any coordination that could help me from my predicament. I tried to push myself up, to see what was wrong with me, but instead of hands gripping what must have been soft green grass, these two pincers – and there was no mistaking their shape, they were in front of me – crashed into the dirt adjacent to each other.

This simply could not be. I couldn't move my legs. My arms and hands were pincers on stalks of armour. My head would not move from its position. I was trapped. Not even paralysed, because my parts _were_ still moving, but trapped by my own inability. Moving my pincers into any shape simply felt wrong, because I should have fingers that could split and rejoin whenever I felt the need, hands that could flex around the wrist, elbows that could twist any direction I want, even my shoulders with their 180 degree movement where constricted. My brain was sending signals to things that weren't there, and couldn't understand the signals it received from what was.

I panicked. I was struggling, writhing, twisting, turning, flinching and flexing to free myself from the physical cage that was me. Or at least, I tried to. In reality I flopped, slammed, and dug my way into my own small crater. I screamed in anger, but the noise that I made dissuaded me from trying it doing so again. God was it awful. I mentally shouted at myself, ordering me to move, for something, anything, to just MOVE!

And a stinger slammed down in front of me.

It was a bone white colour, and looked to be made of chitin, the same kind as any scorpion, except this seemed to be much tougher. It ended in a golden tip that glowed slightly in the light, like a glow-in-the-dark stick when it's cloudy overhead. I felt it too, buried in the soft mud around it. Did I mention it started raining? Well, it did. Anyway, it felt as if I had discovered something new, but at the same time it was always there and I could hardly believe I didn't notice it. Once I felt it, it seemed so obvious that it should be impossible to miss, and yet for the longest time I seemingly had. And when I did, I felt other pathways within me open up.

I lifted up one leg with perfect grace, hearing it let out a satisfying squelch as it stood on firm ground once more. Then another. Then another. And another. Until I had six feet on solid ground, all perfectly synchronised in their movement as I walked forward, eager to use my new found movement capabilities. When I moved, it was as if I glided over the earth, never a single moment where I wasn't moving at the same speed as the moment before. My pincers rested in front of me, and as I turned to inspect them they appeared to have intricate red markings on them. These flowed along the appendage before reaching my body, which I could not see because my head, neck and body were all one and the same, and therefore I could not move any without moving all of them. I could, however, see that they were not on my tail, which hovered in place above me, slightly swinging on its perch from the movement of my body. I did not need to twist my body to see this however, because along with the awakening of my bodily functions was the arrival of several new eyes.

I had exactly ten eyes, which ranged from the larger ones that were practically on my back and let me see the sky above, to four small ones that were immediately in front of my face and mandibles.

Yes, I had mandibles. I couldn't do much with them, because they were only meant to go back and forth, but I had them.

I wondered what to do with my life now. Would I ever see... _them_... again? I saw _them_ because mentioning their name causes me to cry, and the sound is so awful I have elected to keep myself happy. Maybe the situation wasn't hopeless.

I continued to walk until I reached a path. "Where might this lead?" I wondered. "Can I find help at the end?" So I followed it. I didn't tire, nor did I grow hungry. I travelled through the night, and then the day, and then the night again. I passed by a river and thought that I might take a look at what I truly looked like, but in order to do that I had to have my entire body facing the river and no matter what I tried, I would always fall in. I decided not to let what I looked like bother me – I figured that I was somehow a giant scorpion, and thanks to the sight of my pincers and stinger I had a good enough idea of my colour.

Eventually, I reached the remains of a town. Smoke still blew from abandoned homes, and the town reminded me of those ancient pillaged Japanese villages you might see in samurai movies. It was scarier in real life. My new found size had done nothing for my confidence, and even the click-clack of my feet hitting the paved stone scared me. I backed away from every shadow, jumped whenever something that wasn't me hit the ground and full on ran when I heard something howl in the distance. I wanted to leave that place. And so I did.

I was continuing on this path when I saw two children in the middle of the road, walking quickly in the other direction with nothing but a knife in one hand and a small wooden mallet in the other. I must not have thought too much about how my appearance would seem to them, because when I tried to shout hello – the screech was far less awful, and instead felt more like an indication than a nightmarish scream – the boy, who wore a green Japanese-style shirt, gasped then grabbed the hand of the orange haired girl before she could scream. Immediately they both turned grey, as if all the colour in the world had bleached out of them, or as if an artist had drained the colour from his art.

They no longer really seemed worth much time. I even considered downright ignoring them. But I needed their help, and unless I was mistaken bad things could happen to children wandering alone in a place like this. I walked towards them.

 **Well, I started this when I had spare time, and now I have finished it when I really should have been doing just about anything else. I have no intention of finishing this story, but instead I wish to write one more chapter (which will most likely be extremely short) before I leave this up for adoption. My main reason for writing this was that I would read stories that tried something new by making the main character a Grimm – and then realise that the species is always beowolf and that more times than I would like the main character has aura, or people realise it is different and accept it so damn easily. It's like saying that someone found out that their parent was actually of a different sexuality or gender than the one you thought for your entire life – it isn't that easy to accept that what you thought you knew wasn't true! So I made this. Hope you like it, and that someone takes it up after chapter two.**


	2. Chapter 2

As I walked forward, the two children stiffened up and slowly backed away to the edge of the path, turning to the side as if to let me past. That didn't make sense to me. Couldn't they tell I wanted to talk to them? Maybe I was better off leaving...

No! What am I thinking? There is no way that leaving children alone in a place like this could ever be a good idea. Who knows what creatures could try to hurt these two? Performing the equivalent of shaking my head (blinking my four smallest eyes in sequence – it's surprisingly natural to me) I stepped closer to them. The boy started to sweat uncontrollably, leaving dark wet marks around his armpits, and the girl was shaking, holding her mallet (the name for a small wooden hammer) in such a tight grip that her knuckles turned a dangerous shade of white (or well, it should have been white. They were still in that greyish state, so I had to guess by how pale here grey skin became). They needed blood to flow through them, not cut itself off.

"Hello- oh, yeah." I almost forgot I couldn't speak. The screeching hardly helped the children in front of me, as if I wasn't sure they were scared then I would have thought that they had hypothermia from their involuntary rocking, or the way they began to clutch one another in such a tight grip I was surprised they could still breathe.

Maybe I could write? My pincers wouldn't be able to help, as when I tried to turn them into the correct shape they failed to twist to a satisfying degree, and it gave me the same feeling I had when I first changed – it was unnatural, as if my thumb and forefinger were trapped separately from the other three fingers, which could not bend or leave each other's side. Nope. The pincers were out of the question. But what about my tail and stinger? It could reach the ground in front of me, and my control was good enough that it was no longer a stabbing motion every time I brought it down in front of me. I figured it was worth a try.

Slowly I brought my tail down in front of me. This was going to be difficult, since I would have to write upside down, but I thought I could manage it. As I began to do so however, the boy began to speak to the girl. Except, I couldn't hear a single thing they were saying. His lips moved up and down, and the girl nodded her head in agreement, but I couldn't hear a thing.

How weird was that?

It almost made me stop, but I continued to burrow crude lines in the dirt, hoping they would understand my intentions soon enough. Slowly, the boy and the girl began to let go of each other and creep towards me on opposite sides. Had my message worked? I had only begun to write the letter H in the mud, but maybe they understood my intentions? I was soon grasped by hope that my cry for help had been answered.

It wasn't.

The moment that the two children were close enough, the boy in (what should have been) the green shirt said one word – I presume the word was "NOW!" – and they both attacked me at once. The girl raised her mallet high and with more strength than I thought someone of her age could have, she smashed it down one of my eyes.

I thought the pain to be unbearable, until the boy used his knife to stab my other eye, twisting it before removing it with a horrifying squelch. Words cannot describe the agony I felt. To have a set of eyes gone, to be stabbed and crushed at the same time... I could not bear the pain. My stinger tore itself from the ground in a spray of mud and grass, and I ran away from the children as fast as I possibly could, not caring what they did when I was gone, just that they were far way from me. Blood was leaking from my eyes and falling into the next lowest pair, blinding those two as well as causing me more pain and distress. It was a natural torture method, because I couldn't remove the blood, and I was too focused on running away from the murderous psychopaths who attacked a defenceless innocent.

I wanted to cover my eyes from the blood as it leaked, to clutch my wounds in the same way all people shouldn't but do when they get hurt, to do something _human_... but instead I cried out in pain, and fear, and suffering. Those children... what if they came for me again? What if there were more like them? They wanted to kill me! They wanted to end a perfectly innocent life, for no reason! Did they gain satisfaction from this? Did I truly look that horrifying? I ran through the forest, pushing aside any trees in my way until I was convinced I should be tired, then collapsed in a heap on the forest floor, desperately trying to alleviate the pain in some way, or to keep the blood from falling onto my other eyes, but I couldn't.

Those were human actions.

And I wasn't human anymore.

* * *

Hours later, I still refused to cry. Even now, despite the temptation being so strong, I refused to utter that terrible sound. Don't mistake my endurance as some form of strength, or courage. It's like having a cramp when your leg is trapped in the most uncomfortable position – you couldn't do anything except wait for the pain to pass. Of course, the pain was an unfathomable amount worse, for I had lost a pair of eyes, but the principle of the idea remained.

Instead, I waited for my wounds to heal in a nearby cave. The cave felt comfortable, and despite the darkness inside it I could see quite well. I was lucky to have found an empty one, because I know that caves don't exactly appear often in forest, and to find one without (my number 1 phobia) bats? I guess it was karma's way of apologising for the atrocious act that it had committed earlier.

The blood had long since dried over another two sets of eyes, making them next to useless, while I had accepted the fact that the children had forever blinded the original set. I wouldn't say I went through this process as calmly as I may have described it, nor did I by any means do the true pain of losing my eyes and not losing consciousness when it happened any justice. It's something I tend to do a lot when I recount particularly stressful situations. Remove myself from the memory, that is. But back to the point at hand.

It was a slightly dizzying feeling, being able to see in front and above me, but to instinctively know that there was something missing in your field of vision. It was not like there was a dark spot halfway through my sight, but it was instead like when you close one of your eyes – the change was instant, but I always knew there was something I couldn't see, and I would have to tilt my body until one of my other non-blind/blinded eyes saw what it hadn't before, at which point I would realise there was still a spot I couldn't see. It would take getting used to, but now that the pain had mostly gone it was bearable. I would have to wash off the blood in a river.

* * *

 **1 year later**

Nothing much had changed since then. I had washed off the blood from my face, giving me back the sight of two extra pairs of eyes, but the dizzying feeling remained. I continued to follow the path, not because I needed or wanted to, but because I had nothing better to do. If there were ever any travellers then I would run into the forest and run parallel to the path until I was ahead of them. I didn't want a repeat of the child incident, and I still had issues with trusting others. I always had, really. I just thought that, those were children, and as an adult I should take responsibility, or at least not have to worry about what they thought. But then... well. I had issues trusting everybody now.

When I reached a cross-road, I decided to turn left. It was this path that led me to the coastal towns. I saw them from a fair distance away, or at least the walls of one. Why did they need walls? Was there something that would attack them? I didn't know. I decided to walk closer, maybe get a feel for what was going on. Not my smartest choice by any means, but humans are curious creatures, and I was adamant about retaining some human features to keep me sane.

So I walked up to the wall and began to inspect it. It was made out of wooden poles, each with a spiked tip at the top, and all in all it looked to be quite sturdy. While it did fully enclose the town (I didn't walk around the whole thing to figure this out – it would just be stupid to have a wall you can walk around) there was a drawbridge type door on the path. To open it, there was a sign saying to ring the bell, once if you were safe, and twice if surrounded by Grimm. I didn't know what the Grimm were, so I thought "Hey, what's the worst that could happen?" I rang the bell.

I waited for roughly two minutes, shifting my feet in anticipation as I began to consider what might actually happen. I only just realised how they might react to my appearance, of which I still wasn't very clear – I knew the number of eyes I had left, the rough shape of my tail, my colour (unless that also changed) and that I had red markings, but that wasn't a very exact look, even if I knew I was a scorpion. I had just been thinking I was human again, and that I would be treated as such. That was what made me lose my eyes!

But it was too late to worry, and curiosity had always been my downfall, especially when there was something I should avoid. I almost got injured in a construction site because of it. Anyway, back to the point at hand.

Eventually, someone did appear above the wall. While I could only see her face, it was clear by the small wrinkles on her face she was middle-aged, maybe in her late thirties? Although if she asked, I would always go with the safer option of her being 22. When they're young they want to be older, when they're older they want to be younger... it always leads to 22 years old. Moving on, she had brown hair, green eyes, and a terrified expression on her face as she stared into my eyes.

I wouldn't have thought that I looked that intimidating – after all, I hadn't done anything wrong – but she immediately screamed at the sight of my eyes and blew on a whistle hanging around her neck. It still surprised me I couldn't hear a thing that came out of her mouth, but I was soon becoming used to it. When I walked through the forest I couldn't hear the sounds of birds or animals – all of which ignored me, so it was far more interesting than any walks I had been on before – but I could hear their footsteps, or when things hit the ground in general. The only downside was that rain sounded like some kind of out of tune Dubstep, and if there was one thing I hated more than people calling classical music boring, it was Dubstep.

I thought "Well, she isn't attacking me, and she doesn't have a weapon. I haven't done anything threatening to her, or anything that could be misinterpreted. Maybe if I stayed perfectly still, things would turn out okay? For the first minute or so, things went well. The woman had disappeared from the top of the tower for a little bit, but soon reappeared with a look of confusion on her face. I wasn't sure why since I hadn't done anything, but I figured that if I wanted to get inside I couldn't just stand still. So I knocked the bell with my claw again. Did it count as a doorbell? Who knows?

At this, the woman at the top grew even more confused. She kept looking at me as if she expected something to happen. Maybe something to do with my tail, as she kept eying that as it swayed around (that isn't wind related, but instead it was like how your hands swing when you walk – it's totally natural), but overall she just seemed confused.

This soon changed as the door-bridge began to open. Stepping back to avoid having it hit me, the first thing I saw when it fell were two teenage girls dressed in leather armour. One wore a bright yellow tunic that was an absolute eyesore to see, but was made manageable by the streaks of sky-blue running through it in a swirly pattern. The other was instead wearing a foam-green skirt with dark-blue leggings. It reminded me of when I was at the beach, and comparing the sky and the sea with each other on the horizon. Maybe they intended for that theme? I didn't know.

Either way I wasn't sure what it was they were planning to do, but judging by the weapons they were carrying they were prepared for a fight. In fact, the moment that they got a good look at me the one with the shotgun fired.

Thankfully I wasn't hurt. Maybe my exoskeleton was really tough, and would have been able to take some heavy shots while I laid waste to them with my pincers and tail, which may or may not have poison in it (I wasn't certain, having never used it in that way before). Maybe I could have then moved on to the town behind it, crushing the weaker people beneath my enormous weight. Maybe I would have been the greatest fighter to have ever lived, and it all started here. Maybe.

I screamed in fear and ran the other way.

* * *

 **I almost forgot to do this, so thank goodness for the ability to edit chapters after they've been posted, but I would like to give a quick shout-out to Hofund for giving me a new direction to take this story (Honestly, what I had originally planned for was for there to be the 1 year time-skip that you can see now, then after stuff happens a 2 year time-skip where Jaune appears, then another time-skip at which point we are up to date with everything that has happened up until RWBY episode 1), and thank you to Hard Boiled Eggs, because I figured that Beowolves were just too easy for this type of story. Oh, you aren't human now? Be humanoid instead, because it's easier. A good author accepts a challenge! Anyway, I need to finish a chapter for my crossover story, so see you guys later!**


	3. Chapter 3

**In case you are seeing this for the second time, then everything is the same. I just edited some stuff I forgot to edit before, like the line breaks and such. Second time's the charm, right?**

* * *

 **So, a new chapter! Here's to hoping things go well. Once again, thank you to Hofund for the great ideas. I finally came up with a decent way to advance the story, and I'm going to roll with it until it no longer needs to be rolled that way. Here goes!**

Normally, being larger than someone means that you run faster than someone.

Obviously this isn't always the case, as before Usain Bolt decided to reveal himself as the world's fastest man those at the top of the event were relatively small, but my point still stands.

Another method that nature has proven to help increase speed is to add more legs. Admittedly, the amount of legs this usually implies is four, but adding another pair _should_ mean an increased velocity right? That was my reasoning anyway.

With all of this in mind, there was no way two young teenage girls could catch up with me. I was in the clear!

Until the pounding rhythm of quickly approaching pursuers reached my... feet? I didn't have ears which let me hear ambient sound, but I could feel vibrations through the ground, so I suppose the statement was as true as any.

Anyway, back to the point at hand. _"How can they be catching up with me?"_ I mentally screamed. _"No one's that fast, let alone two teenage girls!"_

I realised what that might sound like.

" _Not that their gender means anything, of course, it's just that guys are on average faster than girls, and therefore I assumed – not that I should have assumed anything, beca- what's the point of me even backtracking? They want to kill me!"_

As I began to enter mental warfare with myself, I heard (or is it felt? I guess felt) the feet slowly come to a stop. Had they given up? I refused to raise my hopes. They got crushed too often.

Two seconds later I was proved right.

The – what's between a boom and a tap? Wait, I know – thumping of shoes against a dirt road began anew, except this time it was different. They were taking longer strides, and the thumping was... I suppose heavier. So they were faster and bigger than the two chasing me before I guess.

Crap.

* * *

 **(Like, 1 minute earlier. I would say point of view change, but this is third person, so f*** you)**

"Is that Deathstalker running away?" said unimportant girl #1 (specifically the one wearing yellow).

"Maybe it's an ancient Grimm!" squealed unimportant girl #2 (specifically, the one with the green and blue clothing) with far more glee than required when talking about a Grimm that was potentially powerful enough to require a group of trained huntsman and huntresses to defeat, "which explains why it's smart enough to retreat in the face of two mighty warriors!" Pulling out a pair of wickedly curved daggers, she followed up by saying "Let's go kill it!"

"But what if we get hurt?"

Unimportant girl #2 stared in shock at her equally unimportant twin sister. "Are you forgetting that we are the two greatest huntresses of our year? Even stronger than all of the boys? Able to take on the older years and come out on top? Let's get that thing!" And so the two girls set off after their target, one wielding a shotgun with precision born of extended practice while the other twirled their daggers with precision born from a (dangerous) form of glee that made one forget about precision.

"Where do you think you're going?!"

I'm pretty sure I made it clear the two girls were unimportant right? At least, to this story anyway. The future spring maiden has nothing to do with our favourite Deathstalker named Robert.

The two unimportant girls stopped in their tracks to face the two plot-relevant and older girls who called out to them. With one wearing a thigh-length, long-sleeved white trench coat with red-trimmed knee high boots and the other wearing a mottled-grey hooded cloak along with black leggings and a light blue skin-tight jumpsuit that extended to just above the knees, they cut an imposing figure.

What was far more imposing was the fact that these two unimportant girls now understood why the Deathstalker had ran – the cloaked girl's semblance.

"Go back!" yelled the important white-trench coat girl.

"B-b-but..." stammered unimportant huntress hopeful girl #2, hesitating.

"That thing didn't run from you! You don't even have your own weapons yet!" pointed out important white trench coat girl. The two unimportant girls shuffled nervously. "So leave already!" she glanced at her cousin, the important cloaked girl next to her. "We've got this."

With a final glance at the fleeing creature of darkness and nightmares, the two unimportant girls relented and ran back to the village. Meanwhile, important trench coat girl turned to important cloaked girl. "Why'd you have to scare it off?"

"It was the best option," replied important cloak girl, readying her longbow and taking an arrow from the quiver on her back. "Shall we?"

"After you." And the chase began anew.

* * *

 **(Does this count as the present? The present time is, what, 10 seconds later. Eh, whatever)**

I wish I could have looked behind me, but the lack of a neck means I had to rely on my hearing. And what I heard wasn't good.

They were catching up to me fast, but it seemed that whether or not they caught up with me was of no importance. An arrow narrowly missing the top of my head solidified this point, but I wasn't so blinded by fear I didn't notice the sound (vibrations? Whatever) of a killer teenage girl approaching my left side.

Unfortunately, I was so blinded by fear I didn't care that there was a killer teenage girl approaching my left side.

This proved to be my undoing, as pain so sharp and precise you should be glad to never even come close to imagining it impacted my body with explosive results. The explosion was so huge that it sent me careening to the side, rolling over and crushing my tail multiple times before with a final lurch, I came to a standstill, dazed, bruised, and battered beyond imagining.

" _Oh God, that_ hurts _,"_ I gasped, wincing in pain, _"What was that explosion?"_ I wasn't given any time to think however, as from the corner of my furthest eye I could see a girl wearing white charging towards me, moving at an unbelievable pace across the clearing while clutching a huge metal spear in her hands. Before I could even begin to attempt movement, I saw her click a button on the handle of her mighty weapon, and before my eyes it turned into a medieval looking crossbow, with the top half of the spear sliding downwards and expanding outwards to form the limbs (yes, I know the names of the parts) while the girl loaded an arrow, all while on the move.

As she took aim I realised that I was going to have to do something, other than running. But what? _"Is peaceful negotiations off the table?"_

The bolt fired.

" _I don't think there's a table anymore."_ The bolt flew through the air, aiming straight for my already blinded eye. In a panicked frenzy I tried to smack it aside with my claw, only for the bolt to explode in a burst of raw electricity, shocking and burning my face in equal measure. Screaming in agony, I collapsed, the injuries on my body to great for me to even attempt movement.

" _Is this how it all ends?"_ I wondered. Fear, pain and shock were overloading me so much that I instead felt a serene calm. _"I... I don't want to go. Not like this. Not like a monster. Not without my family even knowing where I am. Not without any friends left to miss me. Not because of something beyond my control. Not like this. Not like this!"_

"Do you mind if I finish it off? It's been a while since I had the chance to blow off some steam." Oh. The girls were still talking. Maybe I could take comfort in a quick death.

It didn't feel very comfortable.

"Sure, I guess. Doesn't look like it'll put up much of a fight anyway."

"Thanks! This'll be fun..."

I stared into the face of a teenage girl with eyes as dark as the night sky. Her face was split by an almost manic grin, and her cloak (though white) only seemed to reinforce what I already knew; this was the face of my death.

Slowly, small streaks of purple light began to extract themselves from various points in the girl's body, until she had several thorn-shaped light constructs surrounding herself. _"Like Steven Universe... I'm never going to see how that ends, am I?"_

Slowly, the thorns began to spin in place, until I realised what they were for – drilling. She was going to drill straight through my skull.

All at once, the thorns began to drift back. I knew what was coming next, and I wished I had eyelids that would stop me from seeing what was coming next. But I didn't. Humans have eyelids.

Pure, uncensored torture exploded from my face.

I screamed louder than I had ever screamed before. I thrashed around, desperate to be free of the pain that clouded my vision – or was that blood? My tail stabbed downwards with terrifying force, but the girl merely sidestepped, grinning in pure ecstasy at my cries of misery. Fear began to overtake me as I lost the ability to see anything but the face of my pain, my fear, my death. She... she was pure evil. And pure evil began to look confused.

With a sudden and sickening lurch, the thorns left their residence in my skull and retreated back into their creator. I stopped screaming and instead took great, heaving breaths. I wanted to vomit. That pain... well, I didn't help that I now knew the thorns were barbed, nor that my insides were slowly leaving their intended positions.

"Hey, Gigi? What's wrong?" The face of death snapped to the face of my defeat.

"I... I think I felt something. From the Grimm. It... It felt human..."

"But that's never happened before, has it? Don't you usually just scare them to death or something?"

"Yeah, but this time it was like... like it was sending something back. Like when I was still training with my semblance."

What on Earth were they talking about? I was tempted to think about it, but, well... my current condition isn't meant for A-level philosophy. As it was, consciousness felt now was a good time to leave me, despite how hard I was trying to keep it in place.

"-looks like it's falling... but Grimm can't... we'll give it a..."

* * *

Unconsciousness was not as peaceful as it should have been.

I had hoped it would be like in all of the books I'd read. They always describe it as being a mostly peaceful sleep, with maybe a prophetic dream mixed in. It wasn't for me though, but that might have had something to do with the fact those people were usually demi-gods, or the chosen one, or some other kind of super powerful teenager.

Not only was I in my late 20's, and therefore far too old to fit into that cliché, I also didn't have a bed to sleep on, friends to fall back on, no helpful mantra to focus on, or even the ACTUAL physical ability to fall asleep; at some point in my dream, I realised that the only thing keeping me asleep was my complete mental exhaustion. That fight... I honestly thought I was going to die, and the person responsible loved _every second_ of it.

Something else that kept me on edge was the voice in the back of my head. It wasn't mine, but I definitely recognised it. But why was I hearing it...?

"You know, you could have killed them. You'd have an excuse too; they tried to kill you first. Self defence is ethical, so they say. But you were always too weak, weren't you?"

The voice was closer. Of course it was her voice. I just can't get away from her, can I? Even when we're on different planets, she's still systematically destroying me.

"I mean, come on. You've got bone armour. You've got humongous claws. You've got a fucking huge tail for God's sake! Heck, you could take _me_ in a fight right now, but you just run aw-"

Being awake sounds better than listening to Males Twich in my dreams.

Coming to, the first thing I saw was a cage. I was confused where the rest of the cage was (why could I only see one side?) until I realised what I really should have figured out immediately; I was in the cage.

Least I was alive.


End file.
